13th June 2021
John Wyver writes: with Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain out in the world and on BBC iPlayer, life is settling down (a bit) and I’m pleased once more to offer a selection of articles that he have engaged me over the past few days – and I’m going to add to a few more as the day goes on…
• International football at the 1948 Olympics: terrific BBC Genome blog post by Paul Hayes about live coverage of international football during the tournament just two years after the television service returned after the war; illustrated with the front cover of Radio Times for 25-31 July which includes the very fine illustration above.
• Gareth Southgate’s extraordinary letter says a lot about England: prompted by Gareth Southgate’s exceptional ‘Dear England’ letter, Michael Walker is very good for The Irish Times:
Southgate has the wit to understand that one generation might disconcert the other and that it is a good idea to listen to both. That was one of the points of his ‘Dear England’ address. As many said, it was the kind of mature letter you might once have expected from our politicians but no longer do.
• The ‘war on woke’: who should shape Britain’s history?: exceptional and important reporting for The Financial Times from Alex Barker and Peter Foster.
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9th June 2021
John Wyver writes: I know that posting comments to blog posts is so late noughties, and as a consequence no-one does it anymore, but I am going to try this as an experiment. Our new film Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain is broadcast tonight on BBC Four at 9pm and will then be on BBC IPlayer for a year.
The 75-minute documentary weaves together an account of the rebuilding of the Cathedral in the wake of a German bombing raid in November 1940 with the social history of post-war Coventry, and more generally of the country as a whole. We feel that it uses a wealth of archive sources in a distinctive and innovative way – and we’d love to know what you think.
I’m going to use this post to collect previews and reviews of the film, and to link to one or two resources, including my other blog posts. Tonight, the film’s consultant Helen Wheatley, our graphic designer Ian Cross and DoP/editor Todd Macdonald will be on Twitter from 7-9pm and then after the broadcast at 10.15pm responding to questions and learning what you make of it. We’ll be using the hashtag #CoventryCathedralBBCFour.
If you watch the film and would like to contribute your thoughts away from Twitter, do please consider posting a comment below and help us develop a Coventry conversation. I will moderate what gets written but only to the extent of blocking anything offensive – I promise to feature the negatives along with any positives.
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8th June 2021
John Wyver writes: Ahead of tomorrow night’s broadcast (9pm, BBCFour), here’s the fifth post in a series about our new documentary Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain. The first four are here, here, here and here. Like the others, this comes with the recognition that you may prefer to save up these posts until after transmission.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 9 June, from 7-9pm, and then after the broadcast finishes at 10.15pm, both I (@Illuminations) and our consultant Helen Wheatley, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick (@hmwheatley) will be on Twitter to answer questions and hear your thoughts. I’m hoping that our wonderful graphic designer Ian Cross (@crossfaq) and equally wonderful DoP/editor Todd Macdonald (@toddmacdfilm) will be around for at last some of the time as well. We’re going to use the hashtag #CoventryCathedralBBCFour. Plus, I’ll do a post here tomorrow for similar exchanges. We really do want to know what you think.
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5th June 2021
John Wyver writes: Since my third post in this series about our forthcoming film Coventry Cathedral: Building fo a New Britain (the first two are here and here) I have been thinking about the eccentricity of writing moderately detailed commentaries to a film that people can’t yet see. Although it’s hardly appropriate to apply the idea of ‘spoilers’ to these notes, I recognise that people may think it inappropriate for me to determine responses ahead of a viewing. So perhaps the best thing to do is to save up these posts until after transmission (9pm, next Wednesday, 9 June, BBC Four). But indulge me publishing them now, please, since that feels for me the best way to get them written.
This post reflects on the archive in what I think of as the second and third ‘chapters’ in the film, following on from an introduction and then the first that details the night of the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940. The next chapter looks at the reconstruction of Coventry immediately after the war, and the one that follows outlines the debate about how the old cathedral should be rebuilt, the competition to select an architect, and the choice of Basil Spence.
One change from the previous posts is that I now have access to a better-quality version from which to take screengrabs – and eventually I’ll return to the previous posts to replace the low res ones there. Also, I intend to add notes about further reading to those earlier posts, and to these as I go along.
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2nd June 2021
John Wyver writes: As the headline indicates, this is the third post in a series about our new film Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain. Following an introduction and a discussion of the opening sequence, today I reflect on the documentary’s second ‘chapter’ and of the archive featured in it. As I acknowledged yesterday, since you can’t yet access the film these posts may be frustrating and/or simply like inappropriate ‘spoilers’, and if you find them so, do please return after the documentary is first broadcast on Wednesday 9 June on BBC Four.
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1st June 2021
John Wyver writes: Having yesterday introduced our new film Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain and promised a series of posts about the project, today I begin with a detailed discussion of just one section of the film and of the archive that it features. I recognise that since you can’t yet access the film itself this may be frustrating, and it may be that the post is something to return to after the documentary is first broadcast on Wednesday 9 June.
I’m also cautious about over-explaining the film and rendering too literal material that I hope retains poetic qualities. Forgive me if you feel that’s the case. All I can offer in reply is to say, stop reading. But it may just be that this and subsequent posts will both whet your appetite for the film and enhance your eventual viewing.
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31st May 2021
John Wyver writes: We’re thrilled to say that our 75-minute archive-based documentary Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain will be broadcast on Wednesday 9 June at 9pm on BBC Four. Part of the BBC’s contribution to Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, the film tells the story of the rebuilding of the Cathedral after a German bombing raid in November 1940 reduced its medieval predecessor to ruins (above). At the same time, the film sets this story in the context of post-war Britain and of the reconstruction of the city of Coventry.
I first proposed this project to the BBC in 2011 and I’ve been working on it, on and off, for the past two years with a group of invaluable collaborators, most especially consultant Helen Wheatley, Professor of Film and Television at the University of Warwick, BBC commissioning editor Mark Bell, graphic designer Ian Cross and director of photography and editor Todd MacDonald.
For me the film is a complement – a kind of prequel if you like – to our documentary Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, shown on BBC Four in October and still on BBC iPlayer. For Coventry Cathedral we have further developed the innovative use of archival moving images, and I’m going to explore aspects of this in a series of ‘postcard’ blog posts in the coming days. In the meantime, here’s the BBC press information for the film:
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30th May 2021
John Wyver writes: the last week has been taken up with completing Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain, our 75-minute BBCFour documentary about which I will be writing here throughout the coming fortnight – so I’ve not had a lot of time for reading, but these were a (very) few of my favourite things…
• Muriel Box – the government files on the work of Britain’s pioneering female director: great research here from Josephine Botting and Sarah Castagnetti via the BFI about state interest in two films from the feature director Muriel Box: Good-Time Girl (1948, above with Bonar Colleano, Jean Kent and Hugh McDermott), which she co-wrote, and Street Corner (1953), which she co-wrote and directed.
• The disappearance of Kevin Jackson: a lovely short tribute by Matthew Sweet for Sight & Sound to the late critic and cultural polymath who died suddenly early this month.
• Dim the lights – the spell of watching films in the dark: Peter Conrad for the BFI: “In Paris in 1927 the surrealist Robert Desnos sang the praises of “les salles obscures”. Less alarmed than Gorky, more happily licentious, Desnos thought that cinemas were dormitories or perhaps opium dens, occult places where you settled down to nod off in the company of strangers, confidently expecting that the images on the screen would duplicate your dreams.”
• Five critics, one of them a killer: David Bordwell reflects productively on five recent film-related books.
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22nd May 2021
John Wyver writes: Another broadcast deadline is just three days away, this time for the Illuminations documentary for BBC Four, Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain. You can expect lots more about this here once it is complete, but for the moment I am rather pre-occupied by it, and so this week’s links is perhaps a touch more modest than normal. Expect bumper editions in the coming weeks, but for now enjoy these articles and videos that have attracted my attention this week.
• State Funeral observes a period of mourning for Stalin: Nick Pinkerton for Sight & Sound on a film (above, and now on Mubi.com) that I’ve long been looking forward to – Sergei Loznitsa’s compilation from footage of Stalin’s funeral…
[Loznitsa’s] films offer a kind of understanding of the past, yes, but it’s precisely an understanding of what we can’t understand, even or especially through the testimony of the filmed image, for the ‘truth’ told by a camera is distorted by an infinity of variables, not least who is holding the camera, and what the person in front of it believes is expected of them.
• On body and soul – Sergei Loznitsa discusses State Funeral: … and there’s a good interview with the filmmaker at Mubi.com by Hugo Emmerzael.
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15th May 2021
John Wyver writes: after a week off, here is the latest list of links to articles and other elements that have caught my attention in recent days; with thanks, as always, to those in my Twitter feed who recommend a host of fascinating pieces.
• The untold story of the NFT boom: a remarkable essay by Clive Thompson for The New York Times Magazine which draws together and explains so much that has mystified me, and I’m sure many others, over the past weeks.
• The Existential Issue: Columbia Journalism Review asks ‘What is journalism?’ in an essential group of articles.
• Imperialism – a syllabus: a truly exceptional resource by Radhika Nadarajan and John Munro from Public Books in the form of an extensive reading list compiled by a historian of the United Kingdom and one of the United States that ’emphasizes approaches to empire that are anti-colonial’:
While our syllabus unfolds in a loose chronology, each week we highlight a structuring dynamic of imperialism, drawing through-lines between past and present. In addition to historical scholarship, essays, and interviews, we include literature and film, because creative forms have been crucial for making imperialism visible, critiquing its operations, and imagining a future after empire. Ultimately, this syllabus aims to foreground a history of imperialism that serves contemporary struggles.
• Uncovering the many Eric Hobsbawms: for Jacobin, Emile Chabal and Anne Perez introduce the extraordinary online Eric Hobsbawm Bibliography which ‘has over 3,000 entries, including details of every published book, journal article, book chapter, review, newspaper article and pamphlet [the historian] ever wrote, along with his unpublished work and his private papers.’
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